I HATE THE TERM BLOG!

This is my buddy Max. He's sitting beside me right now. We're in Vail at the open, and there's 7 people in our one bedroom condo. Myself, cko, nopoles, Dave Bishop, Lia, Alex James and Max. It's a bit of a tight fit, hell I was sleeping underneath the fireplace last night. I got really cold and it was quite nice to turn it on and get all cozy...Ok this is getting useless. I spent a good portion of the day today skiing the mountain at vail. It's a really good time to ride here, not too steep, the snow is good, it's not too cold (compared to montreal) and I'm hanging out with good people. After lunch, our crew who had been riding back bowls all day decided to hit up the park, and get a few laps in and see what was going on. I love riding park. I'm not afraid to say it, it's my favorite thing to do on the mountain. I love riding the powder and large mountains, but usually I don't get to do that, so I tend to ride the park a lot. I liked riding the mountain though... fuck maybe I should move out west one of these days and ride some real snow. Montreal is way too fun though, all wonders of the mountains aside, montreal is an amazing town. Ok, so here's my beef: Riding the park today was fucking stupid. There were so many people there who just wanted to be sooooooo cool it was rediculous. I mean you've got your pro skiers, and they're throwing the fuck down.... (Jacob Wester was unreal *i hope it was in fact him*) which is great. They're wearing all of next years shit, they're great skiers, and they're rolling with all the cool people.... etc. The problem is that there's all these people who just aren't that cool, but they want it so fucking bad. You try to ride through the park and there's a billion people in there all trying to out-cool each other while simply copying all the hot styles from last year. I mean if I see any more double japans I'm going to cut my wrists in the bathtub. Sure, it's a super sick progressive trick, etc, etc... but just try and do something different. There are so many people who claim on being unique and individual, yet they simply copy the trends that are seen as unique and individual. There is a huge lack of people actually being themselves in our industry. Much of the style you see on the hill is simple mimicry of what is hot in the ski videos this year. Problem with that is much of what you see that's hot in the ski videos this year is just what was hot in snowboarding or skateboarding two or three years ago. I want to see people going out on their own and truly doing their own thing. Hell I know I'm guilty of it... I've sold out to the contemporary styles of nowadays... I try to look like everyone else. I guess I just got sick of having a rubber chicken tied to my belt when I skied. The secret to being truly unique: Do something so stupid that nobody in their right mind would ever copy you. Then you're an individual. It is not individual to copy a style that claims to be individual. Trust me. So the next time you want to by a 4XL jersey from some &quot;hot&quot; sports team...remember that someone else already did it and it's played. To be unique is to be the first one in the world to do it. Try that... it's not easy.

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What is style? We covet it, we chase it, we hate it in some and praise it in others, but can we even describe it? This is the combined attempt of the skiers themselves trying to define the concept we find so abstract, but so integral to our sport. This is style.

"You'd expect the freeskiing community to celebrate the kid, and while big parts of it did, I also saw a tsunami of negative reactions from armchair skiers, saying how his triple didn't have enough style."

Gapers are the worst! learn to ski on the freaking bunny trail not the terrain park. Parents are stupid to bring their kids to the park, the chances of little kids skiing in the park and getting wrecked by skiers or boarders who couldn't see them, are very high. Then on top of everything, it's apparently the park skier or snowboarders "fault" that these little kids get hurt because their parents love to let them ski on the back sides of jumps and in the landings of rails and jumps. Ban Gapers somehow!

What is style? We covet it, we chase it, we hate it in some and praise it in others, but can we even describe it? This is the combined attempt of the skiers themselves trying to define the concept we find so abstract, but so integral to our sport. This is style.